Author: Admin

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Apple Inc. today has introduced the much-anticipated iPhone at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco.

The iPhone is claimed to be “a revolutionary mobile phone” as stated on the Apple website. The device appears to be running a mobile version of the Apple operating system Mac OSX. It is approximately the same size as a 5th generation iPod, it has a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen display that is used to access all features of the phone including number dial, as well as making phone calls. The iPhone plays music, movies, displays pictures and is able to connect to a wireless network.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the device by walking onto the stage and taking the iPhone out of his jeans pocket. During his 2 hour speech he stated that “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone, We are going to make history today”.

Today Apple also released their Media Center device – Apple TV. It will directly compete with Microsoft’s Media Center operating system. Apple has taken a different approach to the media center market; rather than storing content (such as movies, music and photos) on the device, Apple TV connects to a computer (Mac and Windows) over a wirless network connection and plays all content stored on that computer. This makes it substantially easier for users to organize their media content.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Philip Tisson, a member of the Saint Lucia national football team, has been killed by a gunshot wound to the head in New York. Tisson was in New York participating in the Digicel Caribbean Cup tournament.

Several members of the team were at Tropiks Bar and Grill in Brooklyn celebrating an earlier victory over Saint Kitts and Nevis. At 4.30am, Tisson entered a parked car outside of Tropiks. While seated in the rear of the car, Tisson was shot in the head. Three women were in the car at the time of the shooting, with one requiring medical attention for a shoulder wound.

According to teammate Sheldon Emmanuel, Tisson left the bar at 3:30 A.M. (EST) with an unknown woman. Tisson’s brother remained with his teammates and only found out about the shooting afterwards by phone. Emmanuel also stated that no one witnessed Tission involved an argument with anyone. A police official said that there are no known suspects. Police are waiting for video evidence.

Tisson had scored in the Saint Kitts and Nevis game. St. Lucia advanced to the finals with their win over Saint Kitts and Nevis to face Jamaica. The team stated they will still play in the final on Sunday “despite the loss of a friend, a teammate and one of their most powerful players”.

In St. Lucia, Tisson is survivied by his three year-old daughter.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

On Monday night, New Jersey, US-based toy retail giant Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy in the US as well as in Canada. The retailer filed it from Richmond, Virginia for Chapter 11 bankruptcy code in the US, and a judge allowed a loan of over US$2 billion.

According to the filing, the retail chain owns US$6.6 billion in assets, but has a debt of US$7.9 billion. They were under a roughly US$5 billion debt since the company underwent a three-way acquisition in 2005. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust acquired Toys R Us for around US$7 to US$7.5 billion. After the US judge approved a loan, Toys R Us received about US$3 billion from the lenders to continue the business and survive a competitive market, and restructure their business model. E-commerce giant Amazon.com, Walmart and Target are some of the competitors for the conventional ‘brick and mortar’ toy shop, with lower priced-merchandise and fast, cheap delivery. In a conference call in June, CEO Dave Brandon said “very, very aggressive pricing online” was causing problems. He also said the company was experiencing “significant weakness in demand for their products globally”. Toys R Us are to clear a debt of US$400 million by May 2018.

Toys R Us said they would continue to operate for the holiday season. Bankruptcy lawyer Jeff Gleit said Toys R Us “need to do both a financial restructuring as well as an operational restructuring” and “needs to modernize with the times”. Last holiday season, Toys R Us made sales around US$4.5 billion. Overall, the company reported a US$29 million loss in 2016. CEO Brandon said, “Our objective is to work with our debt holders and other creditors to restructure the US$5 billion of long-term debt on our balance sheet, which will provide us with greater financial flexibility to invest in our business”.

Toys R Us employs more than 60 thousand people in 38 countries around the world in more than 1600 stores. The company’s stocks fell by six percent after filing for Chapter 11 protection. US bankruptcy code Chapter 11 allows the company to restructure under a plan approved by the court. The company would also be shielded from creditors’ claims during the process. For the stores located in Canada, Toys R Us filed bankruptcy in Ontario and are to undergo reorganisation. However, 259 stores located outside the US or Canada will not undergo reorganisation, the company said.

Over 300 US-based retailers have filed for bankruptcy this year, and hundreds of stores closed.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) ruled Thursday, after thirteen European Union (EU) nations suspended rollouts of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the jab was “safe and effective” and there was “no indication” of correlation between taking the vaccine and blood clotting.

The review included safety data from over 17 million people vaccinated in the EU and the United Kingdom and focused on cases of uncommon blood disorders.

In a statement on the EMA’s website, the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee confirmed “the benefits of the vaccine in combating the still widespread threat of COVID-19 (which itself results in clotting problems and may be fatal) continue to outweigh the risk of side effects”, and neither the vaccine, nor “specific batches”, nor “particular manufacturing sites” were associated with an increased risk of blood clots. It also stated there may be a relation between “very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia”.

Over 469 reports, including 191 from the European Economic Area, it was concluded “[o]verall the number of thromboembolic events reported after vaccination […] was lower than that expected in the general population.”

According to multiple sources, many countries in Europe and elsewhere halted inoculations after reports of blood clots and deaths from those who received the jab, while countries including Austria paused rollout of certain batches.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization said in a press briefing countries should still use the AstraZeneca vaccine. Regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said while “we do not know whether some or all of the conditions have been caused by the vaccine or by other coincidental factors […] the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine far outweigh its risks”. The international body was to release the results of its report on Friday.

While nations can choose whether or not to follow EMA advice, many countries said they would only resume inoculations with its approval. On Tuesday, when the preliminary statement was “encouraging”, France and Italy said they would “promptly restart” if positive results were found.

AstraZeneca said there is no elevated risk of blood clotting as a result of its vaccine, and of the 17 million inoculated in the EU and the UK, only 37 reports of blood clots were received; “much lower than would be expected to occur naturally” and “similar across other licensed COVID-19 vaccines”.

The recent suspensions have only further exacerbated the European Union’s vaccine drive, hindered by serious supply shortages. French immunologist Alain Fischer told France Inter France’s decision to temporarily halt rollout was “not lost time” and the action was justified by “a few very unusual and troubling cases”. Speaking to the BBC, University of Birmingham’s drug safety researcher Dr Anthony Cox called it a “cascade of bad decision-making that’s spread across Europe”.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006Local Government workers in the UK withdrew their labour yesterday as part of a dispute over pension entitlements. The members of 11 different trades unions were involved in the 24hr strike. As the day began they declared that support for the strike was solid. Although the strikers work for local councils, their pay and conditions are agreed nationally. The Local Government Association which represents the local councils in England and Wales declared predictions that 1.5 million people would stay away from work as “wildly optimistic”.

The Unions’ complaint is that local government workers are being treated unfavourably compared to other public sector employees. They say that agreements on pensions that have been reached with civil servants, teachers and health workers will allow those staff to continue to retire at 60 while local government staff will be forced to work until they are 65. Civil servants work for national government, teachers work for local councils but have their own pension arrangements and most health workers are employed by the state-controlled National Health Service.

The Local Government Association claims that if council workers continue to be able to retire at 60, it will increase the levels of Council Tax (a tax on people living in properties which funds a proportion of local government expenditure) by 2%.

The striking workers provide a wide range of services from assisting teachers in the class room, through inspecting kitchens for hygiene to provising care to the vulnerable in society. In some places council workers collect tolls for road tunnels or manage ferries. Mainstream media have reported on the strike all day with heavy coverage of disruption to commuters where transport has been affected. The unions have emphasised the large number of their members who are women working in low paid jobs.

The Government which regulates the scheme claimed that the early retirement provisions (called the rule of 85) were age-discriminatory and had to be removed.

The strike ended at midnight. The Unions have not declared any further strike days.

The Unions involved were AEP, AMICUS, CYWU, GMB, NAPO, NIPSA, NUJ, NUT, TGWU, UCATT and UNISON.

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• “Unison Pensions Campaign” — Unison, 28 March 2006
• “Pensions strike bites across UK” — BBC, 28 March 2006
• LGA Media Office. “Union demands for pension scheme will cost council taxpayers more than 2% extra a year” — Local Government Association, 28 March 2006
• “ODPM STATEMENT ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT PENSIONS” — Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 28 March 2006
• “Unions fighting together to protect our pensions” — Joint Union Strike Team, 28 March 2006